01/04/04: (The Independent) Eight young Iraqis arrested in Basra were
kicked and assaulted by British soldiers, one of them so badly that he
died in British custody, according to military and medical records seen
by The Independent on Sunday.

Amnesty International has urged its members to protest directly to
Tony Blair about the death of Baha Mousa, the son of an Iraqi police
colonel, and to demand an impartial and independent investigation into
the apparent torture of the Basra prisoners. A major at 33 Field
Hospital outside the southern Iraqi city said that one of the survivors
suffered "acute renal failure" after "he was assaulted
... and sustained severe bruising to his upper abdomen, right side of
chest, left forearms and left upper inner thigh".

British military authorities have offered Mr Mousa's relatives $8,000
(£4,500) in compensation, providing they are not held responsible for
his death, but the young hotel receptionist's family plans to take the
Ministry of Defence to court. His body was returned to them, covered in
bruises and with his nose broken, after he and seven colleagues were
arrested by British forces in Basra last September and held in military
custody for three days.

One of the other workers has given a frightening account of their
ordeal. Baha Mousa, he says, was tied and hooded and then repeatedly
kicked and assaulted by British troops, begging all the while to have
the hood removed because he could no longer breathe.

A death certificate provided by the British Army states that Baha
Mousa had died of "asphyxia". A restricted medical document
from a British hospital says a surviving prisoner, Kifah Taha, suffered
his injuries "due to a severe beating". The IoS has copies of
both documents.

After Mr Mousa's death, the Army's Special Investigation Branch
opened an investigation. The Ministry of Defence told the IoS yesterday
that there was "nothing in the records to suggest an inquiry was
not still ongoing". But two soldiers who were arrested have since
been released, and no charges have been made.

Mr Mousa's violent death left two children orphaned: his 22-year-old
wife died of cancer shortly before his detention by British troops.

Part 2:

'The
British said my son would be free soon. Three days later I had his body'

The last time Lieutenant Colonel Daoud Mousa of the Iraqi police saw
his son Baha alive was on 14 September, as British soldiers raided the
Basra hotel where the young man worked as a receptionist.

"He was lying with the other seven staff on the marble floor
with his hands over his head," Col Mousa says today. "I said
to him: 'Don't worry, I've spoken to the British officer and he says
you'll be freed in a couple of hours.'" The officer, a second
lieutenant, even gave the Iraqi policeman a piece of paper and wrote
"2Lt. Mike" on it, alongside an indecipherable signature and a
Basra telephone number. There was no surname.

"Three days later, I was looking at my son's body," the
colonel says, sitting on the concrete floor of his slum house in Basra.
"The British came to say he had 'died in custody'. His nose was
broken, there was blood above his mouth and I could see the bruising of
his ribs and thighs. The skin was ripped off his wrists where the
handcuffs had been."

Baha Mousa left two small boys, five-year-old Hassan and
three-year-old Hussein. Both are orphans, because Baha's 22-year-old
wife died of cancer just six months before his own death.

No one hides the fact that most if not all the eight men picked up at
the Haitham hotel - where British troops had earlier found four weapons
in a safe - were brutally treated while in the custody of the Royal
Military Police. One of Baha's colleagues, Kifah Taha, suffered acute
renal failure after being kicked in the kidneys; a "wound
assessment" by Frimley Park Hospital in Britain states bluntly that
he suffered "generalised bruising following repeated incidents of
assault".

When Col Mousa and another of his sons, Alaa, visited Kifah Taha in a
Basra hospital immediately after his release to seek news of Baha, they
found the wounded man - in Alaa's words - "only half a human, with
terrible bruises from kicking on his ribs and abdomen. He could hardly
speak."

But another of Baha's colleagues - who pleaded with The Independent
on Sunday not to reveal his name lest he be rearrested by British forces
in Basra - gave a chilling account of the treatment the eight men
received once they arrived at a British interrogation centre in Basra.
By a terrible coincidence, the building had formerly been the secret
service headquarters of Ali Majid, Saddam's brutal cousin, known as
"Chemical Ali" for his gassing of the Kurds of Halabja and
later military governor of the Basra region.

"We were put in a big room with our hands tied and with bags
over our heads. But I could see through some holes in my hood. Soldiers
would come in - ordinary soldiers, not officers, mostly with their heads
shaved but in uniform -- and they would kick us, picking on one after
the other. They were kick-boxing us in the chest and between the legs
and in the back. We were crying and screaming.

"They set on Baha especially, and he kept crying that he
couldn't breathe in the hood. He kept asking them to take the bag off
and said that he was suffocating. But they laughed at him and kicked him
more. One of them said: 'Stop screaming and you'll be able to breathe
more easily.' Baha was so scared. Then they increased the kicking on him
and he collapsed on the floor. None of us could stand or sit because it
was too painful."

But not one of the prisoners says he was questioned about the
discovery of the weapons in the hotel. Indeed, the man who hid the two
rifles and two pistols in the hotel safe - one of the partners in the
hotel, Haitham Vaha - fled the building after the British arrived and is
still on the run. His father and another business partner, Ahmed Taha
Mousa - no relation to either Kifah Taha or Baha Mousa - are still in
British custody in southern Iraq. At least one of the men beaten by the
British says that he would happily hand Haitham to the British forces if
he found him.

Amnesty International has demanded an impartial and independent
inquiry into Baha's death and the mistreatment of the other Iraqi
prisoners, but the Ministry of Defence is attempting to keep its
investigation within the Army. Two soldiers originally arrested in
connection with Baha's death have since been released - and Baha Mousa's
family is outraged. "We are going to sue the British Army in
London," his brother Alaa says. "They gave us $3,000 in
compensation, then said we could have another $5,000 - but they wouldn't
accept responsibility for his murder.

"We reject this money. We want justice. We want the soldiers
involved to be punished. How much would a British family receive if
their innocent son was arrested by your soldiers and beaten to
death?"

The Mousa family were given an international death certificate by the
British Army at the Shaibah military medical centre outside Basra. It
was dated 21 September, but again carried an indecipherable signature.
It stated that Baha's death had been caused by "cardiorespiratory
arrest: asphyxia". But the anonymous British officer who signed the
document failed to fill in the column marked "due to/as a
consequence of". He also failed to fill in the column marked
"approximate interval between onset (of asphyxia) and death".
More seriously still, the British Army failed to complete the form's
request for "Regt. Corps/RAF Command" and "Ship/Unit/RAF
Station".

An inquiry was opened into Baha Mousa's death on 18 September by 61
Section of the 3rd Regiment, Royal Military Police's Special
Investigation Branch. Captain G Nugent, the officer commanding 61
Section, named a Staff Sergeant Jay as chief investigating officer of
case number 64695/03. From the start, the SIB were faced with
overwhelming evidence that British soldiers had kicked and beaten the
prisoners in their custody.

Major James Ralph, the anaesthesia and intensive care consultant at
the British Military Hospital's 33 Field Hospital at Shaibah, stated in
a letter - a copy of which is in the IoS's possession - that Kifah Taha
"was admitted to our facility at 22.40 hours on 16th September. It
appears he was assaulted approximately 72 hours ago and sustained severe
bruising to his upper abdomen, right side of chest, left forearms and
left upper inner thigh." He described Kifah Taha as suffering from
"acute renal failure".

Col Daoud Mousa says that his son was deliberately kicked to death by
the soldiers because they discovered that his father had persuaded the
British officer - "Second Lieutenant Mike" - to arrest several
British soldiers who were stealing money from the hotel during the raid.
"I saw two of the soldiers at the back of a safe, wrenching it open
and stuffing money into their shirts and pockets - Iraqi dinars and
foreign money. The officer made one of the men open his shirt and he
found the money and the soldier was disarmed. But the military inquiry
didn't want to hear about this - they weren't interested in the theft or
why the soldiers who were stealing the money would want to mistreat my
son as a result of what I did."

Alaa says that it was three days before they learned the truth about
what had happened to Baha. "I was at home and I went outside to
find the street filled with British soldiers. They didn't have Baha's
name right, but they said they were looking for the family of the man
'whose wife died of cancer'. I said it must be Baha and one of the
officers said: 'Can you come with us?'

"A sergeant came into our home, his name was Jay, and he sat on
our sofa and said: 'I have come to tell you about the death of your
brother Baha.' It was like a revolution in our house - there was
screaming and shouting and crying. The British said they wanted my
father, Daoud, and one of us to come to identify the body. He said a
doctor from Britain was coming to examine the body." Alaa described
how he later met a "Professor Hill", a pathologist who, he
says, later acknowledged that there were "very clear signs of
beating on the body" and that two of Baha's ribs had been broken.

Robert Harkins, the British political officer in the city, arranged
for the Mousa family to meet Brigadier William Moore, commander of
British forces in Basra. The family say that Brig Moore, though he
expressed his condolences to Daoud Mousa, refused to allow an Iraqi
lawyer to participate in the British inquiry. "He told us that
since this had happened inside the British Army, the British Army would
conduct the investigation," Alaa says.

The brigadier issued a statement on 3 October, expressing his
"regrets" that their son "died while under British
jurisdiction" and promising that if the military police concluded
that a crime had been committed, "those suspected will be tried ...
under the laws of the United Kingdom." The family initially
accepted $3,000 of compensation for Baha's death - they say they thought
that by offering this, the British were accepting responsibility - but
they refused to sign a letter they received last month from a British
claims officer called Perkins which offered a further $5,000 as a
"final settlement" of the "incident" which would be
made "without admission of liability on behalf of the British
Contingent of the Coalition Forces in Iraq".

An MoD spokeswoman said yesterday that "as far as I'm aware, as
of the beginning of December, the investigation was ongoing - nothing in
our records suggests it is not still ongoing". But no charges
appear to have been made, no soldiers are currently under arrest and
Alaa Mousa and his father Daoud remain infuriated by their treatment.

"Are the soldiers responsible for killing Baha to go
unpunished?" Alaa asks. "Why can't we be involved in this? If
these men have no punishment, they will do this again.

"We are not saying the British are 'occupiers'. We think you
came here to Basra to save us from Saddam. But you should not treat my
family like this, just paying us money when you kill Baha and ... then
stopping us being involved in finding out what really happened. If you
go on like this, your 'big welcome' in Basra will be over."